Re: gnubish question: installing packages in octave 3.6.4

[Ben Abbott]

On Sep 13, 2013, at 10:47 AM, Robert Poor wrote:

> @Jordi:
> 
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> The one you started from is fine:
>> 
>>   http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_MacOS_X#Fink
> 
> Thanks for the note.  I noticed (belatedly) that the Wiki says to use
> Fink to load Octave packages.
> 
> After doing "fink install octaveXXX-dev", the user can load Octave
> packages using Octave's 'pkg install' function.
> 
> But as the Wiki points out, loading packages via Fink also works.
> 
> Do you have any opinion as to which approach is preferable?
> Certainly, the first approach is less surprising, since the Octave
> documentation says that 'pkg install' is how you load packages.  But
> are there advantages to using Fink instead?

Installing packages via Fink is the recommended approach.  The advantage is 
that some packages may not install on MacOS X without patches being applied.

Ben